A GUIDE TO BEHAVIORAL ANALYSIS AND THERAPY.

By Robert Paul Liberman '59 M.D. New York: Pergamon Press,1972. 343 pp. Hardcover $9.50. Paperback$5.50.

A learned and experienced psychiatrist has produced a book so nontechnical as to appeal to almost anyone interested in behavioral analysis and therapy. An M.D. from Johns Hopkins, Dr. Liberman was trained at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center. Associated with the Harvard Medical School, the National Institute of Mental Health, the Washington School of Psychiatry, the California Department of Mental Hygiene, the Center for the Study of Behavioral Disorders at Camarillo State Hospital, and now Clinical Assistant Professor at the UCLA School of Medicine, he realizes that many persons are blinded by or shy away from the vast number of esoteric articles and books in his specialty and that the need for elucidation is pressing. So he offers the public this guide to help the untrained and partially trained who are concerned with neurotics, juvenile delinquents, retarded and hyperactive children, and hospitalized patients. The fresh approach is a semi-programmed style of writing which makes allowance for these readers with no previous training in behaviorism, psychiatry, or psychology. Dr. Liberman elucidates, plies them with questions (and makes them check their answers), and in simple language at the end of each chapter ticks off important points. Thus parents, students of clinical and abnormal psychology, practising mental-health clinicians, nurses, social workers, and occupational and recreational therapists need not become befogged with jargon about principles and techniques.

Part I, The Basic Principles of Behavior, contains eight chapters: Thinking Behaviorly About Psychiatric Problems, The Environmental Determinants of Behavior, Positive and Negative Reinforcement, Shaping Behavior by Successive Approximations, Extinction and Satiation, Punishment and Aversive Conditioning, Generalization and Discrimination, and Imitative Learning. Part II, Behavior Therapy at Work, discusses the systematic desensitization and assertive training of neurotics, traditional verbal psychotherapy, "the token economy" (i.e. poker chips, credit card blanks, and points given to patients as reinforcers for improvements in their personal, social and occupational behavior), schizophrenic children, and operant techniques in the classroom.

In the appendix Dr. Liberman treats behavioral approaches to family and couple therapy with illustrative cases. A 35-year-old housewife with three children suffers 15 years of severe migraines. A mother of five passionately yearns for five more, aborts time after time, and develops severe depressions. Seemingly retarded, a 23-year- old man is a chronic failure in school and at work. A paranoid husband and a disheveled and disorganized wife squabble viciously and incessantly.

A bibliography containing 68 articles and books, each notice annotated, may serve as maps for further exploration into the new and exciting developments in behavorial therapy.